Nurses with visionary ideas about partnering with pharmacists to optimize medication use and improve patient outcomes may be interested in applying for a new grant.
Up to $75,000 in research support is available through Collaborative Care Grants for Nurses and Pharmacists. This competitive annual grant was launched by the American Nurses Foundation and the ASHP Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the American Society of Health System Pharmacists (ASHP).
“We are pleased to offer this funded research opportunity to spur the development of new solutions in patient care and grateful to the American Nurses Credentialing Center for supporting this grant,” said Kate Judge, American Nurses Foundation executive director. “Nurses and pharmacists working together will generate new innovation and sustainable improvements in care.”
Paul W. Abramowitz, PharmD, ScD (Hon.), FASHP, chief executive officer of ASHP and an American Nurses Foundation board member, was first to suggest that the organizations offer Collaborative Care Grants to build new partnerships around interprofessional care. “The successful collaboration between nurses and pharmacists is essential to optimize patients’ medication use and improve their health outcomes,” Abramowitz said. “It is critical that we establish evidence-based models that support our joint efforts to deliver seamless transitions of care; identify and resolve barriers to medication effectiveness, adherence, and access; and boost health literacy.”
Collaborative Care Grants will be awarded to nurses and pharmacists as co-principal investigators. Proposals may focus on innovating or evaluating new services or technologies to minimize barriers to care for various populations, such as at-risk or complex patients from underserved communities, or individuals who are elderly, have comorbidities, or require chronic care. Grants also may focus on complex systems and processes in emergency departments, transitions of care, continuums of care, or preventative care.
Priority will be given to research that measures teamwork and explores ways to decrease patient harm, increase patient care involvement, improve care transitions, reduce hospital admissions, improve quality of life and resource use for patients with multiple co-morbidities, and minimize barriers to care.
More information about grant applications, due May 3, 2021, is available on the Foundation’s website (nursingworld.org/foundation/programs/nursing-
research-grants/) and via a March 23 application webinar.
Supporting nurses now
When the pandemic first gripped our nation in April 2020, the American Nurses Foundation launched the Coronavirus Response Fund for Nurses to support nurses with direct financial assistance, mental health and educational resources, and advocacy efforts.
With the generous financial support of corporate and individual donors, the Foundation has made significant strides in helping nurses by:
- supporting over 50,000 nurses through our Well-Being Initiative (nursingworld.org/thewellbeinginitiative), which includes a variety of programs that help nurses process and heal from the trauma of this pandemic
- providing $2.35 million in financial aid to over 2,000 nurses across 45 states
- enabling over 70,000 nurses to obtain mental well-being support using apps, meditation tools, journaling, and mental health webinars
- sponsoring a COVID-19 webinar series to support nurses’ education, which has over 185,000 views to date
- launching the Pulse on the Nation’s Nurses Survey Series (nursingworld.org/covid-19-survey-series-results) to learn how to best help nurses through the pandemic, with topics on mental well-being, financial stress, working conditions, access to personal protective equipment, and COVID-19 vaccines (the final comprehensive survey will evaluate the collective impact of COVID-19 on nurses)
- providing a major grant to the TriCouncil for Nursing (the American Nurses Association [ANA], American Association of Colleges of Nursing, American Organization for Nursing Leadership, the National Council of State Boards of Nursing, and the National League for Nursing) to create an advocacy blueprint for post–COVID-19 nursing issues.
In 2021, the Foundation will continue working with ANA and our specialty nursing organization partners to expand programs and resources. Learn more at nursingworld.org/foundation/programs/coronavirus-response-fund.
